FEC to Interrogate Big Tech on Election Manipulation

Big Tech is being summoned by the Federal Election Commission to answer what it is doing to stop digital misinformation before the 2020 elections.

FEC Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub sent out personal invitations to the heads of Facebook, Google, and Twitter on August 30. In three weeks, academics, journalists, party representatives and company representatives will gather together at the FEC to determine what Big Tech is doing before the election cycle.

Facebook and Twitter have responded that they are sending people, but Google has yet to respond.

The meeting will take place September 17. An FEC official anonymously told Politico that “Under the First Amendment, we don’t ban false statements in advertising and social media, but there’s a difference between the right to speak and the right to be disseminated.”

From this, it seems as if the FEC would like more content to be suppressed and shadowbanned in order to prevent foreign interference in an election. However, given that Big Tech tends to err on the side of overzealous when it comes to blocking content, conservatives can assume that more policies will come out of this meeting.

Weintraub has spent the last couple of years downplaying conservative concerns about Big Tech, while overplaying the influence of Russia in the elections. She has said that President Trump’s concerns about voter fraud are baseless, claiming there is “no evidence.”

The mission of the Media Research Center is to create a media culture in America where truth and liberty flourish. The MRC is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and contributions to the MRC are tax-deductible.